Florida may gamble on casinos for revenue

Charlie Patton

Tuesday

Apr 28, 2009 at 3:26 AM

Beginning in 1978, Florida voters three times rejected constitutional amendments that would have made forced the state to allow casino gambling.

But Florida’s political leaders have allowed legal gambling to gradually increase throughout the state anyway. Now the Legislature is debating whether to authorize full-scale casino gambling in Tampa and in South Florida.

“People say Florida isn’t a gambling state,” said state Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville. “That’s a nice thing to say but it isn’t backed by the facts.”

Since the 1930s, the state has had legal betting on horse races, dog races and jai alai. Poker is now legal in most of those facilities.

In the early 1980s, cruise ships began operating out of Florida ports like Mayport, making day trips for gamblers into international waters.

In 1986, the year voters defeated casino gambling for the second time, they approved a different form of legalized gambling, the Florida lottery.

Slot machines have been legal in Miami-Dade and Broward counties for more than a decade.

And for more than year, as a result of an agreement Gov. Charlie Crist made with the Seminole tribe in 2007, casino games like blackjack and baccarat have been played in the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Tampa and in Hollywood.

Although, the state Supreme Court ruled last summer that such games aren’t legal in Florida, the games go on, even as the Legislature debates changing the law. Despite the court ruling, the state has not attempted to stop the Seminole casinos from offering the games but instead has asked the Legislature to allow them to continue.

The Tampa Hard Rock is like “a little Las Vegas,” said Howard Korman, president of the Jacksonville Greyhound Club.

With the state facing a severe budget crisis, Crist told reporters last week he has worked out a revised proposal that will accelerate some of the tribe’s payments to the state if the Legislature approves a gambling compact. That would bring about $1.1 billion going into state coffers in the next two years, he said.

In 2007, Crist argued the deal was needed in order to ensure that Florida got a share of Indian gambling revenues. Under federal law, Indian tribes are exempt from taxation unless a specific arrangement is made. Some legal experts believe the Seminoles can offer Las Vegas-style casino games even without the state’s agreement.

“If we don’t give the Seminoles a compact, they’re going to continue to operate and we’re going to continue to get nothing,” King said.

State Sen. Steve Wise, R-Jacksonville, noted that if the Seminoles do end up operating Vegas-style casinos, which he doesn’t want, it will be partly because of past sins against them. “We took their land and it is coming back to haunt us,” he said.

In this spring’s Legislative session, which is scheduled to end Friday, the House and Senate have approved different versions of a bill that would expand legal gambling in the state.

The House version would change things slightly. It would require the Seminoles to stop offering games like blackjack while allowing them to continue to offer Las Vegas-style slot machines. It would ban slots from the rest of the state, except Broward and Miami-Dade. The bill calls for the Seminoles to pay $100 million to the state annually in exchange.

The House bill would also expand the hours and the betting limits at facilities like the two poker rooms operated by the Jacksonville Greyhound Club.

The Senate version calls for more dramatic change. It gives the Seminole tribe full-fledged casinos, including roulette, craps, slot machines, blackjack and other banked card games as well as poker without limits in return for at least $400 million annually. It would give Miami-Dade and Broward counties blackjack and other casino card games as well as Vegas-style slots. Horse and dog tracks and jai alai frontons would get video lottery terminals.

King said the decision to give the Seminoles the opportunity to run full-scale casinos was made with the idea they would become tourist destinations the way casinos in Nevada are tourist destinations. He believes if the Senate bill is approved, the state could eventually realize $1 billion a year in new revenue.

Wise, who sits on the Senate committee that deals with gambling, said he thinks the Senate passed an expansive version of the bill in order to establish a bargaining position. Their version actually gives the Seminole casino more new games than Crist’s compact did, including roulette and craps.

“The guys threw in the kitchen sink just to be able to give up something,” said Wise, who opposes gambling on moral grounds.

Both Wise and King said it’s unclear which version or what compromise will ultimately emerge.Anything that expands gambling in the state will disappoint some people.

“From a biblical perspective” gambling is not a good thing, said Tom Messer, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church. He said that while researching a sermon, he found a report that Americans were spending more money gambling than on movies, theme parks, cruises and spectator sports combined.

“That would tell me we have a problem,” said Messer, who added he is particularly bothered by the Florida lottery.“The lottery is nothing more than a tax on poor people.”

Paul Mason, a University of North Florida professor who has studied the economics of lotteries and casino gambling, said he agrees that legalized gambling is not the solution to the state’s economic woes.

“I don’t believe that the Legislature should try to raise tax dollars by any form of gambling,” he said, noting that such revenues are unreliable.

Besides there is no guarantee that creating Vegas-style casinos would generate more revenue for the state, he said.

“If they can draw people into the state ... who would not have otherwise come, it could have an impact,” he said. “But if people go to the casino and spend $500 instead of going to Disney World and spending $500, you haven’t gained anything.”

While many of the gambling facilities in South and Central Florida have complained their business is being damaged by the Seminole casinos, Korman said the Jacksonville Greyhound Club continues to do well.

Competition from Tampa shouldn’t be any more of a threat than the competition from South Florida or from the casinos in Mississippi, he said.

“This isn’t as important to us as some people think,” he said. “I only feel threatened if exclusivity comes in. The thing we are most concerned about is any deal that excludes us from doing anything new.”

Jacksonville Suns executive Peter Bragan Jr., who describes himself as a serious poker player, said he believes legalized gambling leads to a “less civil the society.”

“But when the state is laying off teachers, I’d say any kind of unusual proposal is worth a look,” he said.

charlie.patton@jacksonville.com(904) 359-4413

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.

Stay Connected

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
The Florida Times-Union ~ 1 Riverside Ave., Jacksonville, FL 32202 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service